Don’t help us search for teen girl in River Humber, say police

Rob Parsons

Police scouring the River Humber for a 16-year-old girl who fell from the Humber Bridge have urged the public not to try and help as they would be “putting themselves at risk”.

Humberside Police and other emergency services today continued their search for the teenager who fell into the river yesterday morning.

The force said in a statement today: “Humberside Police and other emergency services have specially trained resources that are best placed to undertake searches of the riverbank and river safely, so members of the public are being urged to stay away in order to focus of the search rather than preventing other people putting themselves in harm’s way.

“There have been suggestions in the social media that member of the public intend to attend and offer their assistance, which is being discouraged. Anyone attending would potentially be putting themselves at risk on the unsafe river bank and near the fast flowing river.”

Yesterday the inshore lifeboat Humber Rescue and an RAF helicopter were involved in searching the river after the girl fell in just before 9am.

A spokesman for Humberside Police said: “Humberside Police were called at 8.52am today with concern for the safety of a 16-year-old girl who was threatening to harm herself at the Humber Bridge.

“Police resources were deployed to the bridge where the girl was on the wrong side of the railings. She left the bridge into the water below.

“Emergency services are in attendance trying to locate the girl.”

Coxswain of Humber Rescue Dave Roberts said: “We have just been out on the river for two-and-a-half hours. The tide was going out so we had a job searching in the areas we wanted due to lack of water. The helicopter was up and down a few times, whether they picked up anything, I don’t know. We saw nothing at all.”